SELT centres · Last reviewed 13 August 2026

B1 English test centres in the UK

The Home Office publishes every approved Secure English Language Test centre in the UK. This is that list — 80 centres across 27 towns and cities — with the address published for each one and how to book with the provider that runs it.

Approved centres
80
Towns and cities
27
Providers
4
List dated
11 August 2026

These are not Life in the UK test centres

Every address on this page belongs to an English language test centre. The Life in the UK Test is a separate exam, sat at separate venues, booked through a separate system, for a separate fee — and the two centre networks have nothing in common. Turning up at one expecting the other means losing the appointment and the money you paid for it.

The lists behave differently too. This SELT list is published in full by the Home Office, with addresses. Nothing equivalent exists for the Life in the UK Test: GOV.UK states: "There are over 30 test centres in the UK. You can choose where to take your test when you book." Where those venues are is shown only inside the official booking service, after you have created an account. How to find your Life in the UK test centre.

On this page

  1. Where this list comes from
  2. Centres by city
  3. Who runs which centre
  4. How booking a centre works
  5. What the list does not tell you
  6. Frequently asked questions
  7. Sources

Where this list comes from

The Home Office attaches a spreadsheet, “List of approved test centres in the UK from August 2026”, to its SELT guidance on GOV.UK. The edition shown here is dated 11 August 2026, was published on a page last updated 12 August 2026, and holds 80 rows. Every centre below is one of those rows, with the provider, centre name and address reproduced as the file records them — nothing added, nothing tidied up.

Providers on this edition: IELTS SELT Consortium (16), LanguageCert (22), Pearson (22) and Trinity College London (20). The Home Office revises the list often and says more centres will be added as new approved provider services become available, so treat this page as a copy of a snapshot and open the source file if a centre matters to your booking.

Read the SELT guidance on GOV.UK Download the Home Office centre list (ODS)

You will leave LifeUKPractice for GOV.UK. LifeUKPractice is an independent study resource and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the UK Home Office, gov.uk, or any government body.

Centres by city

The quickest way to find a B1 English test near you is to start from your own town or city and work outwards — you are free to book any approved centre in the UK. Every one of the 27 towns and cities in the list has a page of its own, listing each approved centre, the provider that runs it and how to book. Live somewhere else? See the nearest approved centres to towns not on the list. The Home Office file records a town or city and nothing else, so the grouping by nation and region below is ours, added to make 27 places navigable.

England

64 centres in 23 towns and cities

London

South East England

South West England

East of England

East Midlands

West Midlands

Yorkshire and the Humber

North West England

North East England

Scotland

8 centres in 2 towns and cities

Wales

4 centres in 1 town or city

Northern Ireland

4 centres in 1 town or city

Who runs which centre

Four organisations are approved to run SELTs taken in the UK, and each runs its own centres, its own booking system and its own fees. Choosing a centre therefore means choosing a provider first. These are the counts in this edition of the list.

IELTS SELT Consortium

16 centres in the UK

Book this exam: IELTS Life Skills – B1 Speaking & Listening

Fee: IELTS does not publish a single UK price for Life Skills on ielts.org. The test is delivered by the consortium's partner centres and the fee is shown at the point of booking, so we have not stated a figure. Anyone quoting a fixed IELTS Life Skills price is quoting one centre, not a national rate.

IELTS Life Skills is the one to book for citizenship or settlement — 'a single test covering speaking and listening skills', taken face to face with an examiner and one other test taker, lasting around 20 minutes. It is not band-scored: 'you will receive either a Pass or a Fail result depending on how you performed.' IELTS for UKVI is the separate four-skills test, needed for work and study routes rather than for citizenship. Booking is through the consortium's centres, which trade under the British Council and IDP brands; ielts.org is the consortium's own site and its test-centre finder is the safest entry point. We were unable to load takeielts.britishcouncil.org for verification on 13 August 2026 (HTTP 403 to our fetcher), so no fact here rests on it.

Listed by the Home Office as an approved SELT provider for tests taken in the UK. Its approved B1 speaking and listening test is IELTS Life Skills B1 (pass required); IELTS for UKVI is also approved at B1 across all four skills (4.0 in each of listening, speaking, reading and writing). Operates 16 of the 80 UK centres in this edition of the list, several of them run by the British Council or a partner college.

Book with IELTS SELT Consortium · About the exam

LanguageCert

22 centres in the UK

Book this exam: LanguageCert International ESOL SELT B1 (Speaking & Listening)

Fee: From £160 for the two-skills Speaking and Listening exams at A1, A2 and B1. From £200 for the four-skills Academic and General SELT exams. LanguageCert presents these as 'Price from', so the amount can vary by location.

The exam for citizenship and settlement is LanguageCert ESOL SELT B1 Speaking and Listening: a computer-delivered test with a live examiner, lasting 11 to 13 minutes, in five parts — personal questions, a role play, describing and discussing images, listening comprehension, and an uninterrupted talk on a topic the examiner supplies. The pass mark is 60 out of 100. Provisional results appear within a few minutes and official results in 3 working days. LanguageCert advises arriving at the centre 30 minutes before the start time with valid photo ID. A free re-sit is offered under a 'Take2' promotion whose terms are set by LanguageCert and can change — check the small print at booking rather than relying on it. Note the change GOV.UK records: 'From 6 July 2025 the LANGUAGECERT ESOL SELT 4-skills test was replaced by the LANGUAGECERT Academic SELT and LANGUAGECERT General SELT tests', with existing 4-skills results remaining valid for 2 years.

Listed by the Home Office as an approved SELT provider for tests taken in the UK. Its approved B1 speaking and listening test is LanguageCert International ESOL SELT B1 (Speaking & Listening), which needs 60/100. LanguageCert also has four-skill tests approved at B1: the four-skill International ESOL SELT B1, LanguageCert Academic SELT and LanguageCert General SELT. Operates 22 of the 80 UK centres in this edition of the list.

Book with LanguageCert · About the exam

Pearson

22 centres in the UK

Book this exam: PTE Home B1 — speaking and listening

Fee: Pearson does not publish a flat UK price. Its own FAQ directs candidates to 'the price finder tool at the top of this page, or on our test centers and fees page', and fees vary by country and may include local taxes. We have not invented a figure.

The exam for citizenship and settlement is PTE Home B1: Pearson's PTE Home B1 product page describes it as a '22-minute test with results typically in 2 days' that 'Meets the B1 English requirement for settlement (ILR) and citizenship'. Pearson's own pages are not consistent on the length — the PTE Home hub page says 'Take your test in 30 minutes' and the SELT overview page gives a 22 to 25 minute range across the A1, A2 and B1 levels — so treat 22 minutes as the figure Pearson publishes for B1 specifically and do not present any of these as a guaranteed appointment length. It is a single computer-based test, taken in a small centre with no more than 15 seats per room, scored by AI, and reported as a simple pass or fail. The score report 'usually within 48 hours' includes the SELT URN needed for the immigration application, and Pearson states results are shared with the Home Office automatically. PTE Academic UKVI is the separate four-skills test for work and study routes.

Listed by the Home Office as an approved SELT provider for tests taken in the UK. Its approved B1 speaking and listening test is PTE Home B1 (pass required); PTE Academic UKVI is also approved at B1 across all four skills (43 in each). Operates 22 of the 80 UK centres in this edition of the list, branded Pearson Professional Centres.

Book with Pearson · About the exam

Trinity College London

20 centres in the UK

Book this exam: Graded Examinations in Spoken English (GESE) Grade 5 — B1, speaking and listening

Fee: £160 for any GESE exam, including the B1 GESE Grade 5. £200 for ISE exams. An optional add-on called Exam Protect costs £35 on top of the exam fee and allows the candidate to book one retake and reschedule once.

The exam for citizenship and settlement is GESE Grade 5. Trinity describes it as 'a 10 minute speaking and listening test that can be taken at an approved Trinity SELT centre'. It has two parts: a discussion of a topic the candidate prepares in advance — 'You must complete a Topic Form in advance and bring it with you to the exam' — and a conversation with the examiner about two subject areas. Provisional results are emailed by 9am the day after the exam; a link to the digital certificate is emailed within 4 to 7 days of the exam date. Trinity is approved for SELTs taken in the UK only; it does not appear on the Home Office list of tests taken outside the UK.

Listed by the Home Office as an approved SELT provider for tests taken in the UK. Its approved B1 speaking and listening test is Graded Examinations in Spoken English (GESE) Grade 5 (pass required); Integrated Skills in English I (ISE I) is also approved at B1 across all four skills. Operates 20 of the 80 UK centres in this edition of the list.

Book with Trinity College London · About the exam

How booking a centre works

There is no central booking service for the English test and no way to book one through GOV.UK. You pick the provider, then book a date at one of that provider’s centres inside its own system, in the name on the identity document you will bring. That is the opposite of the Life in the UK Test, which has a single official booking service and a single operator.

GOV.UK is blunt about what to do before you travel: “Check the SELT provider’s website to find out when tests are available and to make sure the test centre is open. If you have any questions, use the website. Do not contact the test centre directly.” An address on this page tells you where a centre is, not that it has a free appointment next week.

Before you book. The exact ID rules, the approved test names to look for, results and the unique reference number your application needs are all set out on the B1 English test guide. Booking the wrong product from the right provider is the common, expensive mistake: every one of these providers also sells English tests the Home Office will not accept for citizenship or settlement, so check the exact product name against the approved list before you pay.

What the list does not tell you

These are the limits of the published file, stated plainly so nothing on this page is read as more than it is.

  • This is a list of Secure English Language Test (SELT) centres. SELT centres are not Life in the UK Test centres: the two are separate exams with separate providers, venues, booking systems and fees, and there is no official public list of Life in the UK Test venues.
  • The Home Office revises this list often — the GOV.UK page carrying it has been updated many times, at times close to weekly — and it says more centres will be added as new approved provider services become available. Treat any copy of it as a snapshot of 11 August 2026 and re-check the source file before relying on it.
  • Every one of the 80 centres in this edition is marked 'Available' in the Availability column, so the column does not distinguish between centres in this snapshot. It is a status flag on the approval list, not a live indicator of appointment availability. GOV.UK's own instruction is to check the SELT provider's website to find out when tests are available and to confirm the centre is open.
  • The file does not say which tests or CEFR levels each individual centre runs. A centre may offer several levels (A1, A2, B1 and above) or only some, and provision differs by provider. Only the provider's own booking system can confirm whether a given level is bookable at a given address.
  • City names are reproduced exactly as the Home Office file records them. Some Greater London locations are listed under their own city name rather than under London — Croydon, Stratford and Uxbridge each appear as a separate city — so a count of 'London' centres taken straight from this list is narrower than what a reader would call London.
  • Addresses are reproduced verbatim from the published spreadsheet, including its inconsistencies: some repeat the postcode inside the address, some repeat the city or 'United Kingdom', and the Pearson Professional Centre - Leicester entry gives the postcode as 'LE1 1T', which is one character short of a valid UK postcode. Addresses have not been corrected, normalised or geocoded, and should be confirmed against the booking confirmation from the provider.
  • Booking is done through the SELT provider, not through GOV.UK and not through this site. Fees, identity document rules and rebooking terms are set by each provider.
  • The list covers tests taken in the UK only. The Home Office publishes a separate list of approved test centres outside the UK, and PSI Services (UK) Ltd trading as Skills for English is an approved provider outside the UK but does not appear among the UK centres in this file.
  • Passing an approved B1 SELT is only one half of the knowledge of language and life requirement for citizenship or settlement; the Life in the UK Test is the other half. Some applicants are exempt from one or both. Only the applicant's own GOV.UK guidance decides which applies.

Every row in this edition carries the same availability flag, which is why no centre on this page is marked as busier or quieter than another: the file simply does not say.

The English test is only half the requirement

Citizenship and settlement need both parts of the knowledge of language and life requirement: your English, proved to the Home Office’s satisfaction, and a pass in the Life in the UK Test. Our practice tests for that second half are free, with an explanation for every answer.

Take a free practice test Read the B1 English test guide

Centre questions

Is there an official list of B1 English test centres?

Yes. The Home Office publishes the full list of approved Secure English Language Test centres in the UK as a spreadsheet on its SELT guidance page. The edition on this page is dated 11 August 2026 and holds 80 centres in 27 towns and cities. That is the opposite of the position with the Life in the UK Test, where no list of venues is published at all.

Can I take the B1 test at any centre in the UK?

You are not tied to the centre nearest your home. You choose the provider first, then book a date at any of that provider’s approved centres through its own booking system. GOV.UK expects most people to be able to sit a test within 28 days of booking but warns it may not always be at the location nearest to you.

Does this list show which centres have appointments free?

No, and no list can. Every row in this edition is marked "Available", which is a flag on the approval list rather than a live appointment feed. GOV.UK's instruction is to check the SELT provider's website to find out when tests are available and to make sure the centre is open, and not to contact the centre directly.

Does every centre run the B1 speaking and listening test?

The Home Office file does not record which tests or CEFR levels each address runs. A centre may offer A1, A2, B1 and higher, or only some of those, and provision differs by provider. Only the provider’s own booking system can confirm that the B1 speaking and listening test is bookable at a given address.

Sources

The centre list was downloaded and parsed from the Home Office file itself, not copied from another site, and each provider page below was opened and read. Last reviewed 13 August 2026. Centre arrangements change — check the source file and the provider before you travel.

LifeUKPractice is an independent study resource and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the UK Home Office, gov.uk, or any government body.